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Restructuring Announcement

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Re: Restructuring Announcement

#141

Post by KennyBlanken »

melbourne_mat wrote: post #65

From an alternate universe: I apologize for my erratic behavior which has tarnished our brand and created unnecessary turmoil within our organization. Regrettably, we will need to implement a 16% reduction in headcount to address the financial challenges we now face. I have decided to step aside and hand over control to my deputy, who I believe will provide the steady leadership needed to rebuild trust and restore ou…

He'll never admit he was wrong or step down. He'll drive Automattic into the ground and Wordpress along with it (until someone forks it, like say...WP Engine, heh. Or Redhat, or IBM, or some huge web design firm, etc.)

He considers Wordpress "his" even though...he took it over from the original author who was abandoning the project.

It reminds me of the rage-bender Jamie and Jim Thompson went on, attacking OPNsense for "stealing" their work and doing a lot of immature things taking over opnsense's domain, their subreddit, etc. via legal actions. And at least one lawsuit. They lost on every front - reddit gave the subreddit back to the opnsense developers, ICANN gave them back their domain name, etc.

Attacking OPNsense for "stealing" pfSense was pretty rich given pfSense's origin; netgate slapped their logo on m0n0wall and started working on their fork. Which is exactly what opnsense did that enraged them...

Especially as pfsense software started getting more user-hostile and shifting functionality into the paid versions, pfsense has rapidly become less and less popular. I almost never see anyone recommend it anymore.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#142

Post by oblio »

dylan604 wrote: post #96
oblio wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about some companies that should have the best IT departments on the planet.

Writing off equipment through depreciation is a time honored thing for corps. If they sell them, they are no longer a write off. That's now more work for the bean counters.

Then donate them.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#143

Post by KennyBlanken »

mgdev wrote: post #83
refuser wrote: post #2

Not especially surprising, but there’s an awfully large elephant in the room that likely directly contributed to this necessity that goes completely unmentioned.

Matt's only real problem is not owning his ambition openly. Trying to publicly argue the moral high ground was a stupid, unforced error. It didn't need to be moralized at all. Just make the changes you want to make, piss off a vocal minority, then get back to winning and making boatloads of money by executing exceptionally. The problem, I suspect, is that Matt values how certain people perceive him more than he value…

IMHO moralizing wasn't really the problem.

The extremely erratic behavior, the ego, the fixation with vengeance, harassing organizations legally using the Wordpress name, abusing his power at the wordpress foundation, using it to punish Automattic competitors...

He pissed off a lot of people, but worse: he made a lot of people nervous.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#144

Post by AlotOfReading »

goldchainposse wrote: post #118
AlotOfReading wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually did it. This was back in the times when you could get a job the next day, and my new employer didn't want me keeping anything from the old employer by the time I started. Old employer was dragging their feet on the shipping label and made it clear that failure to return the equipment would be considered theft. I gave them a week of daily reminder emails with an approaching deadline (no response), then hand…

> made it clear that failure to return the equipment would be considered theft Is "please arrange for a courier to retrieve it" not the end of your obligations?

In a situation where everyone (including me) was acting reasonably, sure. But I was slightly gruntled from being pushed out for filing a safety report, and keeping it in my possession would have technically violated my new contract. Giving it to the police was clearly not stealing it and didn't require going out of my way to help them solve a problem of their own creation.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#145

Post by hinkley »

pityJuke wrote: post #89
gregoryl wrote: post #79

Huh. >> There are no layoffs plans at Automattic, in fact we're hiring fairly aggressively and have done a number of acquisitions since this whole thing started, and have several more in the pipeline. https://old.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1hxnh73/automatt...

How infuriating for anyone recently hired caught in this trap. It seems to me the obvious, from both a business & human perspective, is to stop hiring at first signs of trouble, before layoffs. To do so otherwise is cruel. I doubt Matt had zero idea about this possibility two months ago.

The exuberance and self-assuredness that your plans are going to work out leads to overreach and I think the lag in accounting practices helps make that more acute.

I have had too many experiences where I thought my current employer was about to start circling the drain, and I've ended up some place that was circling faster. At a guess I'm about 50:50, which I suppose I should count as 'lucky' but has never felt that way.

Fish-tailing is a common flame-out mode for startups. VCs are partly to blame. They don't like to discourage you in case you come up with a miracle, but neither do they want to put good money and time after bad if it turns out you're going to be a break-even play or a loss.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#146

Post by joquarky »

solardev wrote: post #105
melbourne_mat wrote: post #65

From an alternate universe: I apologize for my erratic behavior which has tarnished our brand and created unnecessary turmoil within our organization. Regrettably, we will need to implement a 16% reduction in headcount to address the financial challenges we now face. I have decided to step aside and hand over control to my deputy, who I believe will provide the steady leadership needed to rebuild trust and restore ou…

If only we had real leaders...

We do, but the sociopaths outcompete them.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#147

Post by foolswisdom »

nostrademons wrote: post #135
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is so hard to fathom that a leader trusted with millions of dollars of other people's money can be so disengaged from recruiting as to not see a hard wall of cash crunch, months if not years ahead. You can't assume fundraising will always go swimmingly. You have to always be in survival mode, and if that means not hiring aggressively, then you put on the breaks until the money comes in . Either as a leader you are…

The issue was interest rates. Money was free in Feb 2022; the interest rate was literally 0%, and so any cash-generating investment at all is profitable. Fed started raising rates in Apr 2022, at which point leaders started freaking out because they know what higher rates mean, and by Jun 2022 the Fed was raising them in 0.75% increments, which was unheard of in modern economics. By Jan 2023 the rate was 4.5%, which…

> Fed started raising rates in Apr 2022, at which point leaders started freaking out because they know what higher rates mean, and by Jun 2022 the Fed was raising them in 0.75% increments, which was unheard of in modern economics.

You're basically making the case that it happened fast, and went up high, but everyone who paid attention to interest rates understood it was only a matter of time till it had to at least revert back to pre-covid rates (whether you think that's 1.5 or 2.3 or something, depending on how you measure), and that obviously there would need to be real layoffs after.

The excuse is really saying "it turned out more extreme than we thought", but was the behavior take responsible assuming non-extreme rate changes?

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#148

Post by hinkley »

mathgeek wrote: post #123
alvah wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm of the mindset that any time a company does layoffs, they should start from the top And work down. Oh, to be young and idealistic again! So in your world, the people running the business should fire themselves first?

> So in your world, the people running the business should fire themselves first? If they are needed to continue leading, they should consider cutting their own salary until the problems are fixed. Let them take their entire compensation in just their equity for a time. However we all know this won’t be the norm, and that’s OK. Not great, just OK.

I do know of one guy who took a pay cut because unless he hamstrung his own team badly he was looking at needing to lay off about 2.3 people and so he cut his own salary to make it 2 instead of 3.

That's one story surrounded by a hell of a lot of shitheel stories.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#149

Post by hinkley »

nostrademons wrote: post #108
pityJuke wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How infuriating for anyone recently hired caught in this trap. It seems to me the obvious, from both a business & human perspective, is to stop hiring at first signs of trouble, before layoffs. To do so otherwise is cruel. I doubt Matt had zero idea about this possibility two months ago.

The business world changes direction faster than companies can adapt. That was my biggest lesson as an entrepreneur: entrepreneurs don't really pivot into product-market fit, the market pivots into them . The reason capitalism works is because there's this huge sea of dream-chasers out there, most of whom will go bankrupt, so that when the market's needs change there is somebody out there to service them, and everybo…

I've worked at a couple consultancies who played themselves by investing too heavily in one or two customers.

Once a single customer is 1/3 of your revenue they can start extracting considerations from you that may not be what your employees thought they signed up for. It's a good way to end up being a body shop. I don't have a philosophical problem with body shops per se, it's just that I don't want to work for one, so I pick places that should know better, but sometimes don't.

It can also be problematic if 2 customers account for 45% of your revenue and they both get the same idea, which can happen particularly when the market shifts. You have no way to call their bluff and move enough people to other projects to make it stick.

Re: Restructuring Announcement

#150

Post by o11c »

pjc50 wrote: post #88
wmf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With apologies to Louis XIV, Matt is Automattic.

L'etatt, c'est M'att.

For the unaware (or under-aware): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi

Probably apocryphal. A lot of people these days only know it from Star Wars.

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